The Philippine Supreme Court (SC), in a very daring move, reversed the Court of Appeals and Regional Trial Court decisions and acquitted the accused, Hubert Webb et al, for the murder and rape of Carmela Vizconde and the murder of her mother and sister.

This does not prove that there is justice in the Philippines. On the contrary, it gives steel-clad proof that Justice is non-existent in this country.

A reading of the SC decision will immediately show that the evidence against the accused were tenuous as it was based solely on the testimony of a drug-addict “asset” or informant of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). The SC stated:

Was Alfaro an ordinary subdivision girl who showed up at the NBI after four years, bothered by her conscience or egged on by relatives or friends to come forward and do what was right? No. She was, at the time she revealed her story, working for the NBI as an “asset,” a stool pigeon, one who earned her living by fraternizing with criminals so she could squeal on them to her NBI handlers. She had to live a life of lies to get rewards that would pay for her subsistence and vices.
According to Atty. Artemio Sacaguing, former head of the NBI Anti-Kidnapping, Hijacking, and Armed Robbery Task Force (AKHAR) Section, Alfaro had been hanging around at the NBI since November or December 1994 as an “asset.” She supplied her handlers with information against drug pushers and other criminal elements…

When Alfaro seemed unproductive for sometime, however, they teased her about it and she was piqued. One day, she unexpectedly told Sacaguing that she knew someone who had the real story behind the Vizconde massacre. Sacaguing showed interest. Alfaro promised to bring that someone to the NBI to tell his story. When this did not happen and Sacaguing continued to press her, she told him that she might as well assume the role of her informant. Sacaguing testified thus:

ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. Atty. Sacaguing, how did Jessica Alfaro become a witness in the Vizconde murder case? Will you tell the Honorable Court?
x x x x
A. She told me. Your Honor, that she knew somebody who related to her the circumstances, I mean, the details of the massacre of the Vizconde family. That’s what she told me, Your Honor.
ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. And what did you say?
x x x x
A. I was quite interested and I tried to persuade her to introduce to me that man and she promised that in due time, she will bring to me the man, and together with her, we will try to convince him to act as a state witness and help us in the solution of the case.
x x x x
Q. Atty. Sacaguing, were you able to interview this alleged witness?
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. No, sir.
ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. Why not?
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. Because Jessica Alfaro was never able to comply with her promise to bring the man to me. She told me later that she could not and the man does not like to testify.
ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. All right, and what happened after that?
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. She told me, “easy lang kayo, Sir,” if I may quote, “easy lang Sir, huwag kayong…”
COURT:
How was that?
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. “Easy lang, Sir. Sir, relax lang, Sir, papapelan ko, papapelan ko na lang ‘yan.”
x x x x
ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. All right, and what was your reaction when Ms. Alfaro stated that “papapelan ko na lang yan?”
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. I said, “hindi puwede yan, kasi hindi ka naman eye witness.”
ATTY. ONGKIKO:
Q. And what was the reply of Ms. Alfaro?
WITNESS SACAGUING:
A. Hindi siya nakakibo, until she went away.
(TSN, May 28, 1996, pp. 49-50, 58, 77-79)

It is amazing that Judge Amelita Tolentino threw out 132 out of 142 pieces of evidence that the defense presented yet regarded Jessica Alfaro as if she was an innocent angel from Heaven.

Judge Tolentino and the Court of Appeals justices also denied the alibi of the prime accused, Hubert Webb, that he was in the US at the time of the crime. Both courts dismissed official documents from the US embassy, the State department and the airlines, including the pay slip and other US and Philippine documents, that Mr. Webb was indeed in the US during the period in question.

The reasoning of the Judge and the Justices as well as the prosecuting lawyers was that those documents could easily be faked and/or the officials were bribed.

Obviously, the Judge, prosecuting lawyers and the justices were very familiar with corruption. But surely, wouldn’t it be cheaper to bribe Alfaro and other unbelievable witnesses like the maid and the security guard instead? In fact, wouldn’t it be cheaper to bribe an RTC judge than US government officials?

The SC stated:

The trial court and the Court of Appeals expressed marked cynicism over the accuracy of travel documents like the passport as well as the domestic and foreign records of departures and arrivals from airports. They claim that it would not have been impossible for Webb to secretly return to the Philippines after he supposedly left it on March 9, 1991, commit the crime, go back to the U.S., and openly return to the Philippines again on October 26, 1992. Travel between the U.S. and the Philippines, said the lower courts took only about twelve to fourteen hours.

If the Court were to subscribe to this extremely skeptical view, it might as well tear the rules of evidence out of the law books and regard suspicions, surmises, or speculations as reasons for impeaching evidence. It is not that official records, which carry the presumption of truth of what they state, are immune to attack. They are not. That presumption can be overcome by evidence. Here, however, the prosecution did not bother to present evidence to impeach the entries in Webb’s passport and the certifications of the Philippine and U.S.’ immigration services regarding his travel to the U.S. and back. The prosecution’s rebuttal evidence is the fear of the unknown that it planted in the lower court’s minds. (Emphasis supplied)

NBI’s MODUS OPERANDI

The crime happened in June 1991. As usual with Philippine police and the NBI, they could not come up with forensic evidence and had to rely on assets or stool pigeons to point them to probable suspects. When suspects are nabbed, they are tortured until they confess.

The first suspect was the Barroso “akyat bahay” gang, a small-time criminal group that robs houses. With enough torture, some of the gang members confessed. Thankfully, an enlightened judge of the Makati Regional Court dismissed the confessions as a fabrication by the police.

Four years after the crime, the police and the NBI faced a dead wall. But behold, in April 1995, Jessica Alfaro, the NBI’s own asset, even a “darling of an asset” as pointed out by the SC, announced to the Filipinos that she would reveal all the juicy details of the Vizconde massacre. By this time, the Filipino masses had been impatient and frustrated over the government’s apparent inutile attempts at finding the culprits. Two movies had already been shown about the Vizconde Massacre. Former President Cory Aquino’s daughter, the present Presidential Sister, starred in the first movie.

PERFECT TYPECASTING

When Jessica Alfaro appeared on the scene and pointed to a Senator’s son, Hubert Webb and other rich boys as the culprits, the Filipino masses were ready and eager to have a “proper” ending for this real life soap opera. After seeing Carmela Vizconde, portrayed by popular actresses, raped and killed twice in the movies, the Filipino masses wanted Revenge.

It also helped that Alfaro was quite pretty. In fact, a movie, The Jessica Alfaro story, was immediately made starring sexy popular actress Alice Dixson.

I had not seen any of these movies, but if a movie was made on the life of Jessica Alfaro, recounting the story Jessica told the prosecutors / police, then this could have only concretized in the minds of the Filipino masses that Alfaro was telling the truth. Why was this movie allowed to be shown at the start of the hearings? Was it not sub judice?

It is also a coincidence that the accused Hubert Webb’s father was a basketball superstar and actor and another suspect, Tony Boy Lejano, is the son of former actress Pinky De Leon, sister of movie superstar Christopher de Leon. While Hubert and Tony Boy were not actors, their parents were, which made the whole affair showbiz-like.

Perhaps in the minds of the masses, it was Carmela Vizconde (as Kris Aquino and Vina Morales) and Jessica Alfaro (as Alice Dixson) vs the Rich Bad Boys (the Webbs and De Leons of showbiz). (Incidentally, in the 1970s, Pinky De Leon went publicly against the marriage of his brother to Philippine movie’s number one superstar Nora Aunor, the idol of the masses. The De Leons and the Webbs are of Caucasian descent while Lauro Vizconde was of the kayumanggitype.)

While the trial was going on, Radio-TV host Renato Cayetano, who was also the presidential Legal Counsel and Vice Chair of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC), made it a point to be interviewed every so often by the media. The PACC took jurisdiction over the investigation in June 1993. The masses voted Cayetano to the Senate in 1998 perhaps due to his media exposure from his radio-TV show and frequent appearance in the news regarding the Vizconde case. Even after he became senator, Cayetano continued giving his “running commentary” on the Vizconde case.

It was all show biz.

MIND-NUMBING TRIAL BY PUBLICITY

The Vizconde Massacre was in all the papers for years. It was made into movies. As the SC noted, the case “had been reported in the media with dizzying details”. And that was BEFORE Alfaro came into the picture. With a son of a former basketball superstar-turned-senator and a nephew of a an “established” movie star cast as the “contra- bidas” (villains), the media coverage could be expected to be so much more than “dizzying”. It could be mind-numbing, which was precisely what the prosecutors, the police/NBI, the judge and whoever else was behind this rigmarole wanted. They wanted the people to be so numb that they would just applaud the judge’s decision without giving it a second thought.

I remember when Judge Tolentino’s decision was read out aloud in court and broadcast all over the media networks in January 2000. I thought that it was the most idiotic reasoning I ever heard. To somehow distract the people’s attention from the the sheer illogic of the decision, the judge wrote pages and pages of it — 186 pages in all, narrating the whole story as witnessed by Jessica Alfaro. She probably thought that the sheer length of her decision would numb the minds of the people and so they would just applaud her decision, whatever it was.

For being such a great upholder of Injustice in the land, Judge Tolentino was promoted to Justice of the Court of Appeals.

CA JUSTICES DON’T READ THE CASE DOCUMENTS

The many revelations that came out during scandals affecting the Court of Appeals (CA) justices, such as in the case of the Meralco-GSIS bribe scandal, one can conclude that the Philippine Court of Appeals is in such a great mess.

I believe it was in the Meralco-GSIS case that a justice complained that the other justices could not have made a fair decision because they could not have possibly read the voluminous documents of the case in so short a time.

But who has heard of CA justices reading court documents?

In the recent plagiarism case involving the SC, it is now proven that some justices don’t even write their decisions. They either just copy them or ask their assistants to write and/or copy for them.

Alibi is the Latin term for elsewhere. When a person says he has an alibi, it means that he was elsewhere when the event happened.

In any of the numerous American cops-and-robbers or crime/mystery movies and TV shows, if a police detective says that the suspect has an alibi, it usually means that he is likely to be not guilty unless the cops can come up with convincing evidence that the suspect was lying.

In the Philippines, in everyday speech, when one says that another person has an alibi, it usually means that that person has an excuse but is most probably lying.

Philippine courts are fond of stating something like:

“Settled is the rule that the defense of alibi is inherently weak and crumbles in the light of positive declarations of truthful witnesses who testified on affirmative matters. Being evidence that is negative in nature and self- serving, it cannot attain more credibility than the testimonies of prosecution witnesses who testify on clean and positive evidence. On top of its inherent weakness,alibi becomes less plausible as a defense when it is corroborated only by relatives or close friends of the accused.” (See Annotation on Alibi and Denial by Judge Alicia Gonzalez-Decano) [emphasis added]

This means that if a person has a grudge against you or is paid or coerced by someone, s/he has the power of life or death over you as s/he can testify that you committed a crime even if a thousand of your friends and relatives will swear to high heavens that you were with them at the time the crime was committed. In fact it is even worse (“less plausible as a defense”) if these friends and relatives would vouch for you. You could even present bus tickets or airline tickets or photographs or videos of you being somewhere else — all to no avail. The power of positive identification by a witness is sacred in Philippine legal system, it seems.

This is a bit understandable because without the testimony of such witnesses, no person in the country would be in jail for murder, rape, robbery, etc. unless s/he was caught in the act (inflagrante delicto). There is no such thing here as FORENSIC EVIDENCE.

The justice system obtaining in this country is like during the war-time Japanese occupation when collaborators, with their heads covered in paper bags with holes for them to see, pointed out people for the Japanese to arrest and later execute.

ALIBI IN OTHER COUNTRIES

In R v Demers, (1926) 4 DLR 991 (Quebec), Justice Hall wrote:

“In its essence a defence of alibi is nothing more than a plea of not guilty, because the accused was not present at the place where the offence was committed on the occasion indicated.

“Once introduced, the evidence of the prosecution is, for the moment, suspended, and the judge or jury is bound to examine the evidence offered in support of the alibi, since it is clear that, if the alibi be established, the accused could not be the guilty party.”

“… if you accept the evidence in support of the defence of alibi, you must return a verdict of not guilty if you find that these times just do not allow for this accused to have committed the acts alleged.

“If you do not accept the evidence in support of the defence of alibi, but you are left in a reasonable doubt about it, you must return a verdict of not guilty.

“Even if you are not left in a reasonable doubt by the evidence in support of the defence of alibi, you must still go on to determine whether or not on the basis of all the evidence the accused is guilty.”

From the quotes above, it is clear that in other countries, it is imperative to examine the evidence supporting the alibi. In fact, as Justice Arbour noted above, if the jury is not certain about the evidence at hand; i.e., it could be true or it could be false, then a verdict of not guilty must be made.

Were Judge Tolentino and the CA justices absolutely certain, without reasonable doubt, that the plane tickets, the airline manifestos, the passport visa stamps, the certifications by the US embassy, etc. that were given to support Hubert Webb’s alibi were ALL FALSE and FABRICATED by the seemingly all-too-powerful Webb family?

Even the SC was stumped at the apparent illogical reasoning of the lower courts. It said:

The courts below held that, despite his evidence, Webb was actually in Parañaque when the Vizconde killings took place; he was not in the U.S. from March 9, 1991 to October 27, 1992; and if he did leave on March 9, 1991, he actually returned before June 29, 1991, committed the crime, erased the fact of his return to the Philippines from the records of the U.S. and Philippine Immigrations, smuggled himself out of the Philippines and into the U.S., and returned the normal way on October 27, 1992. But this ruling practically makes the death of Webb and his passage into the next life the only acceptable alibi in the Philippines. Courts must abandon this unjust and inhuman paradigm.

If one is cynical about the Philippine system, he could probably claim that Webb, with his father’s connections, can arrange for the local immigration to put a March 9, 1991 departure stamp on his passport and an October 27, 1992 arrival stamp on the same. But this is pure speculation since there had been no indication that such arrangement was made. Besides, how could Webb fix a foreign airlines’ passenger manifest, officially filed in the Philippines and at the airport in the U.S. that had his name on them? How could Webb fix with the U.S. Immigration’s record system those two dates in its record of his travels as well as the dates when he supposedly departed in secret from the U.S. to commit the crime in the Philippines and then return there? No one has come up with a logical and plausible answer to these questions. [emphasis added]

The SC majority decision did not mince words. With the illogical reasoning of the lower courts (and the dissenting justices, including the Chief Justice), the only way that Webb, or for that matter, any accused, could claim his innocence would be if he were dead. But if he were dead, there wouldn’t have been any trial.

SC JUSTICES’ DERRING-DO

Most of the masses, including the middle class, are now wondering why the SC suddenly changed the decisions of the trial court and the court of appeals. Didn’t Judge Tolentino get her promotion to the CA because of her supposed brave decision on the Vizconde case? Didn’t presidential legal counsel and PACC chief Rene Cayetano get elected to the Senate partly because of his role in the swift investigation and arraignment once the accused were named? Wasn’t Jessica Alfaro the heroine-savior just as the Vizconde girls were the heroine-victims? Weren’t Hubert Webb and the other rich boys the villains in this real-life soap opera? What will happen now to Lauro Vizconde, the husband and father of the victims. Almost twenty years after the crime, and everything is set back to square one? How could the SC do this?

Indeed, it was very brave of the SC to come up with a very controversial, if not unpopular decision. It can be presumed that with the close decision (7-4, with 2 abstentions, 1 not taking part and 1 on leave), there must have been a lot of quid-pro-quo horse trading, especially since the Chief Justice led the dissenters.

IS THERE JUSTICE IN THE PHILIPPINE COURTS?

This landmark decision by the SC cannot be taken to mean there is justice in the Philippines. On the contrary, it is a very good document that there is no justice in the country.

It shows that injustice starts first at the hands of the police and NBI. These agencies do not care whether the real culprits are caught or not. They merely want to get some people who will be accused and put on trial.

It shows that the Regional Trial Court judge has God-like powers. S/he can admit or deny evidence as s/he deems fit. S/he holds the power of life and death over the accused in his/her sala. What the RTC judge rules in criminal cases are usually upheld by the CA on the presumption that the lower court has the better vantage point having seen and heard the actions and words (including the tone of voice, body language, etc.) of the accused and the witnesses first hand.

Too much power in the hands of one person, with all his/her biases and prejudices cannot be good for the justice system. And in a country where a judge gets a very modest pay, opportunities for bribery are too many.

Perhaps the only remedy here is TO HAVE A JURY SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES. Being judged by a dozen of one’s peers, randomly chosen, is so much better than being judged by ONE person who is only accountable to a dozen or so of his/her colleagues in the legal and judicial professions.

As a rule, the higher court justices do not read the voluminous volumes of the trial proceedings. They merely scan through them, at best. The SC usually only rules on matters of law and not whether the trial court judge and the CA justices erred in appreciating the merits of the evidences provided. The present case is an exception to the rule.

The scandals that rocked the CA recently provided us mere glimpses on the present mess the CA is in.

Besides, Judge Tolentino has been with the CA since 2001. She is also a town mate of President Macapagal-Arroyo. How could the CA reverse the decision of one of its justices?

KAPAMILYA (FAMILY RELATIONS)

The Vizconde case trial finished in 2000. It took ten years later before the SC acted on it. Ten years is not long in the Philippines. And I believe that if the political situation is different, Hubert Webb et al would still be in jail.

First, the Presidential Sister is a movie star. I remember reading in 1992 that this Presidential Sister, Kris Aquino, asked her mom, then President Cory Aquino to include Freddie Webb in the senatorial line-up.

Kris Aquino is a contract star of the Lopez-owned radio-TV network. Freddie Webb and his daughter, the broadcast journalist Pinky Webb are also under contract with ABS-CBN. It is a very well-known fact that the Lopez and Aquino families have a symbiotic political relationship. President Cory Aquino gave back ABS-CBN, which was sequestered by the late President Marcos, to the Lopezes. In the 2010 elections, the network practically ran the Aquino campaign.

It is popular knowledge that the Lopezes take good care of their talents, one of whom became a senator and another became the past Vice President. The ABS CBN calls itself the Kapamilya (Family or Relatives) network. Thus, presidential sister Kris Aquino, former VP Noli de Castro, Freddie and Pinky Webb belong to one big family. And by extension, so do President Noynoy Aquino and Hubert Webb.

BLITZKRIEG DEVELOPMENT

This year, the Vizconde case suddenly got a new life. Not waiting for the mandatory SC review, the Webb camp petitioned the SC to have the semen sample found in Carmela Vizconde’s body be tested for DNA.

This has been petitioned before and was denied by the lower court because at that time, the Philippine authorities supposedly lacked the capacity to do so. This previous decision again proves the absolute lack of justice in the Philippines.

If Philippine agencies could not test DNA samples, could they not send these samples elsewhere, say Hong Kong or Australia or even the US? Aren’t the lives of the accused more precious than the few dollars needed to send the samples abroad for testing? Aren’t the courts supposed to ferret out the TRUTH?

In April 2010, 15 years after the crime, the SC granted the Webb motion to test the DNA sample. Apparently, the NBI now has the capability to do so.

As the SC pointed out, Webb did not make such appeal earlier in the Appellate Court. Obviously, the Webb camp knew that the appeals court would simply throw it into the dustbin. It must be noted again that Judge Tolentino was already CA Justice Tolentino. And Justice Tolentino came from Lubao, Pampanga, the hometown of the late President Macapagal and his daughter, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

As expected, the NBI claimed that it had given the sample to the trial court. The trial court denied it. And so, we then had the case of the missing sperm. And this gave the Webb camp the reason to file an urgent motion for Outright Acquittal due to denial of due process last October 8.

By Nov. 26, Lauro Vizconde told media that a justice told him that one of the senior justices was trying to strong arm the others to change the CA verdict. Vizconde was referring to a pro-Aquino justice.

On Nov. 29, Biong, who was convicted as Webb’s accomplice, was released from jail after supposedly serving his full term. He then went on a media tour (courtesy of ABS CBN), giving interviews here and there. Of course, he maintained his innocence as well as Hubert Webb’s.

Meanwhile, the Webb camp set up the Free Hubert Webb sites in cyberspace like in Facebook. The campaign was on.

On Dec. 14, just a little over 2 months after his urgent motion for acquittal, Hubert Webb, after spending 15 years in jail, was exonerated by the Supreme Court.

But the media campaign is not over. ABS CBN needs to drum up more support for Webb and company, for good measure. After all, the prosecutors might appeal the SC decision.

INJUSTICE FOR ALL

This 15-year drama has caused serious injury (mental, emotional if not physical) to so many people — to the accused, their friends and loved ones, to the witnesses and to Lauro Vizconde whose family the real criminals took away from him.

The Filipino suffers the injustice as well. The individuals and institutions – the police, the NBI, the prosecutors, the judge and the justices — mandated to be the protectors of the people and the guardians of Justice – were really the ones who made a mockery of justice in the country.

If Webb and his co-accused were ordinary people like poor Lauro Vizconde and did not have the wherewithal to sustain a long fight, then they would be spending Christmas in jail all their lives.

What is very discouraging is that unlike in the US where there is no statute of limitation for first degree murder, in the Philippines, twenty (20) years is the prescription period. In the Vizconde case, the prescription period will lapse in June next year. Mr. Vizconde will never have justice.

And it is my holiday wish that the NBI and police will not fall back on their M.O. and pick up suspects pointed out by their assets, torture them to force confessions or to fabricate lies and false witnesses and start another twenty years of courtroom drama.

LACSON KNOWS BEST

Incumbent senator and former presidential candidate Panfilo Lacson is fleeing justice. Lacson used to be with PACC and was head of the Philippine National Police (PNP). As a police chief and as senator and presidential candidate, he knows very well, better than us, ordinary mortals, how the wheels of justice turn in this FAILING/FAILED STATE called the Philippines.

IT IS TIME FOR THE FILIPINO PEOPLE TO WAKE UP AND DEMAND JUDICIAL REFORM.

The Historical Conservation Society is an elite group of Filipinos and foreigners interested in Philippine history. They come from the same social stratum and generally have the same biases and prejudices. They form a close-knit interpretive community. Mr. Felix had absolutely no qualms about sharing his true feelings about the Moros and Islam.

But in the society at large, most people do not want to show their biases, not in this politically correct world. However, a survey asking innocuous questions might draw some inferences on the ignorance or non-awareness of people about something. And ignorance is usually the cause of prejudices.

A questionnaire was given to some 17 young students of the University of the Philippines (16 – 21 years old). 11 of them come from the Tagalog tribe, 2 are Visayans and the rest come from non-Tagalog areas of Luzon. The aim of the questionnaire was to gauge their awareness/non-awareness of things Moro/Muslim.

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

The Questionnaire was a multiple choice type so it would be easier to spot the more politically correct answer. Only 4 out of 17 answered that a Moro is a Muslim because the other choice – a Moro is a Muslim indigenous to Mindanao – looks and sounds the better answer. If no answers were provided, most would probably say that a Moro is a Muslim. Nevertheless, in spite of the presence of the correct answer, 23% still chose the Moro is a Muslim answer. Like Mr. Felix, they believe that Moros and Muslims are actually synonymous and interchangeable.

(There is confusion among the general Philippine populace on the difference between a Muslim and a Moro. A Muslim is a follower of the Islamic religion while a Moro is indigenous to Mindanao. The Moro definition is not historically correct. The Spaniards used to call all Muslims Moros, from the Spanish Moors to the Muslim Malays and Indonesians.)

Yet even those who answered ‘the Moro is a Muslim indigenous to Mindanao’ thought that Yakans and Samals are Lumads. Actually, most of them have no idea what or who the Yakans and Samals are. Some Yakans and most Badjaos are non-Muslims but all are Moros.

A majority (59%) believes that the Moros do not like to be called Moros. It does not seem apparent to them that the M in MNLF and MILF stand for Moro and not Muslim.

Practically every schoolchild is taught that Rajah Soliman was the last King of Manila. Why then do many Filipinos think that Soliman was either Christian or pagan? His very name is Islamic – Suleiman not Solomon — and the reason he fought the Spanish was for Freedom and Islam. In this survey, 40% think that Soliman was non-Muslim. Does this mean that teachers and/or textbooks do not say that Soliman or Lakan-Dula were Muslims?

Around 65% think that the Abu Sayyaf Group is not just a kidnap-for ransom gang or a bunch of criminals but is a {‘legitimate”) separatist Moro rebel group.

Most of the respondents have no Moro friends while some had Moro friends before. From their comments and answers, one can conclude that they really do not know much about the Moros, which is really the crux of the problem.

The collective memory against the Moros (whether ‘foreign Moros’ or local Moros) as immortalized in zarzuelas and moro-moro; the depiction of Moros as uncivilized in history books by Spanish, American and Filipino writers; the constant wars against the Moros waged by various Philippine administrations – all these create huge amounts of biases and prejudices.

And this can only be remedied if there is an awareness of the Moro culture and history in the Philippine experience. To paraphrase Ben Jonson, “Peace hath an enemy, its name is Ignorance.”

Surveys, Part II

Sultan Qudarat’s speech

In order to further test hermeneutic principles, we asked a sample of students to read the speech delivered by the Maguindanaon Sultan Qudarat to the M’ranaos in 1639. In contrast to the Spanish texts, this speech is very positive for the Moros. It shows that the Sultan is quite clear on the issues at hand; i.e., liberty or subjugation by the Castillans.

If it is true that the text itself has a life of its own, and directly communicates with the reader, as alleged by hermeneutics, then this speech will have positive effects on its readers. The subject readers are all University of the Philippines (UP) students, quite young (18 / 19 years old)

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

The results of this small survey showed that a positive document could have positive effects on the readers. The readers hardly knew Qudarat, but after reading his speech, they seemed to have a more positive view of the Moros (brave warriors, proud heritage, etc.) The speech also clarified to them that the Moros’ enemies were the Spaniards and not the Indios or Tagalogs or Visayans.

Most of the respondents were 18-year olds which mean that they were not yet born during the MNLF wars of the 70s or even the signing of the Tripoli Agreement. They were even too young when Ramos signed the Jakarta Peace Agreement with Nur Misuari. Their concept of the Moro Problem seems to be centered on the Abu Sayyaf Group. Although the “all-out war” policy of the Estrada government was directed more against the MILF, these young students do not seem to know the difference between the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF since the media do not really bother to indicate such difference.

From the results of this survey, one can conclude that the students of today come from a different interpretive community as the generation of Mr. Felix, Jr. The college students of today are ignorant of Moro history and even the existence of a Moro Problem. They were not born yet during the MNLF wars of the 1970s. But this ignorance can be a positive thing. Unlike the generation of Mr. Felix, these young people do not have deep suspicion or even hatred against the Moros.

The Siege of Palumpong

To test the above statements, we asked another group of UP students to read the text of the Siege of Palumpong and answer a questionnaire. The rationale behind this survey is to test whether the old generation of Mr. Felix shares the same sentiments as the young generation of today’s college students.

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

Unlike Mr. Felix, the respondents thought that the text was biased and exaggerated. Almost half thought that it was not even factual. One respondent even gave an additional comment that it was “too miraculous.”However, even if they felt that the text was biased and exaggerated, it appeared that they were affected by it. In the question on what they think of the Moros, the Sultan Qudarat speech respondents answered positively. This time, the respondents answered negatively. A very small portion (14%) gave positive remarks. Some admitted that the text influenced them.

Majority thought negatively of the authors because they did not believe the truthfulness of the article. They seemed to take it against the authors for writing an obviously exaggerated account (to their minds) that they considered almost like an insult to their intelligence. The respondents were all UP students. Would it have made a difference if the respondents were students of say, Ateneo, which is run by the Jesuits or even Miriam College, a neighboring Catholic school?

All of them answered that the Spanish were the enemies of the Moros in 1754. One respondent reiterated her answer in the Comment section but added that she will have to check it up. It is important that the Filipinos realize that the Moros’ enemies then were the Spaniards and not the Christianized natives, who were themselves subjugated by the Spaniards.

A majority thinks that there is no such thing as a Moro Problem while the others think that the Moro Problem is just the Abu Sayyaf problem. Some believe that the problem lies in some discriminatory practices of the Christians towards the Moros. Again, the ignorance of the students about the Moro Issue is quite surprising. But again, such ignorance can be a positive factor.

Most proposed Peace Talks and Better Understanding in order to solve the problem. Proposals to give the Moros independence would have been significant if the respondents knew what the Problem was all about. However, those who proposed to give the Moros what they want also answered that they didn’t know much about the Moro Issue.

As in the Qudarat speech survey, most respondents did not agree with the all-out war approach. Those who agreed seemed to have the idea that the all-out war was only waged against the Abu Sayyaf.

The Palumpong survey indicated that a) the younger generation do not share the same perception as the generation of Mr. Felix, and b) a 200-plus year old text can still affect readers as indicated by the increased number of negative descriptions of what a Moro is as well as the negative descriptions of the authors, namely, the Jesuits and c) a negative document can still have negative effects (image of the Moros) even if the readers do not fully believe the document’s truthfulness. The Palumpong survey also confirms the Qudarat speech findings that a) the students are hardly aware of the Moro Problem, b) the students equate the Moro Problem with the Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and c) the younger generation prefers Peace Talks to “all-out war.”

CONCLUSION:

Hermeneutics remind us that the prejudices and biases of the perceiver must always be taken into account. From Fisher’s reader-response theory, we see that texts get their meaning from the reader. Mr. Felix’s “interpretation” of the 1755 texts is a case in point. It can be concluded that Mr. Felix and his colleagues at the Historical Conservation Society belong to the same interpretive community. The fact that the members of that Society comprise the elites of the larger Philippine society is ominous for the Moros, who are in the minority and who appear to be the object of hatred of Mr. Felix’s group.

The Christian majority, specially the Christian settlers in Mindanao, decries the fact that the Moros tend to always refer to the historical past. The Christians maintain that any dialogue between the Moros and Indios must necessarily be grounded in present-day realities. But Mr. Felix’s reaction to the 1755 texts clearly shows that Christians, as exemplified by Mr. Felix, are very much affected by the past. As the great American President John Quincy Adams once declared, “Who we are is who we were.”

The two surveys also show that centuries-old texts can and do influence today’s readers. Considering that most history (text)books in the Philippines have very disparaging accounts of the Moro, and present mass media coverage are very biased against the Moros, tearing away prejudices and biases would be an Herculean task.

The surveys of a small sampling of students do not give encouragement either. Most of them admit ignorance of Moros / Muslims and their ways. They get their impressions of Moros mostly from the mass media. But as Littlejohn says “if literary texts always get their meaning from the reader, media depictions must also derive meaning from the interpretive community.”(Littlejohn, p.210)

Since the mass media derive meaning from the interpretive community, then the plight of the Moros would certainly go for the worse. The mass media organizations are owned by non-Moros. Unlike the Chinese and the Iglesia ni Cristo, the Moros do not own any mass media organization. They have absolutely no influence in the mass media as no mass media outfit targets them as the audience.

In hermeneutics, the negatives can be used positively. The ignorance of the younger generation about the Moros can be regarded positively. Since this generation is not full of mental baggage about the Moros, i.e., there is much less prejudice and bias against the Moros, they can be made to have a better understanding of Moro history, culture and traditions so that in the future, when the leaders will come from this generation, they can help promote a lasting peace with the Moros.

The survey respondents (3 samplings) are young university undergraduate students. The fact that they don’t know much about the Moro Problem may indicate that the general population may also not know much about the Moro Problem. If UP students are ignorant of the real causes of the Moro Problem, could we expect the average Filipino to be better informed? Perhaps it is actually ignorance of the real causes of the problem that is the stumbling block to its eventual solution. (It is the habit of the government never to admit publicly its ignorance on any subject.)

Combating ignorance is a long process. It would need an overhaul of educational materials about the Moros as well as better portrayal of Moros in the mass media. And most importantly, there must be a strong resolve by the government to truly help the Moros by empowering them; i.e., appointing qualified and competent Moros (not only those subservient to them) to high government posts, giving educational and economic opportunities to Moros (including those who are not Malacanang lackeys), refraining from interference in local politics (rigging the elections), and giving sufficient budget (actually not technically) to local government units in the Moro region.

In the 1970s, at the height of the fighting, the government spent millions of dollars (one million dollars a day according to some reports) and lost at least 50,000 lives including thousands of young Filipino soldiers. Both sides claim victory in the MNLF war, which ended because of Marcos’s urgent plea to Libya’s Qadaffi to call for a Ceasefire Agreement which eventually led to the Tripoli Agreement.

The MILF fight has been costing the country quite a sum, too, especially Mr. Estrada’s “all-out war” campaign. Mr. Estrada declared a smashing victory over the MILF, which made his popularity rise sky-high. Yet it appears that MILF is still as strong as ever. Mr. Estrada also declared complete victory over the Abu Sayyaf Group. But as everybody knows, it’s still business-as-usual for the Group.

The Abu Sayyaf, which the government equates with the Moro Problem, is creating black propaganda not only for the Moro Cause but also for the Philippine government. Tourism and Business in Mindanao have suffered greatly. The only thriving industry there is the kidnapping industry run by the Abu Sayyaf Group whose members, according to the grapevine, are mere “industrial partners” whose real financiers (non-Moros) are in the higher echelons of government.

From the 15th century, the Moros were masters of their destinies while the Indios were a subjugated people under the Spanish. It was only in the 20th century when the Moros finally accepted foreign (American) domination in exchange for the right to practice their religion and way of life. Later, they agreed to be part of a Republic to be shared with the Indios, now called Filipinos. Some thirty years after their experiment with co-habitation with Filipinos in a republican setting, the Moros rose again, only to be foiled by Marcos’s diplomatic and political genius.

The new century / millennium started with an American War Against Terrorism, which many Muslims the world over see as the War against Islam. (The lapsus lingue of US President Bush when he declared a “Crusade” against his enemies did not escape the Muslims’ attention.) The presence of US Marines in Mindanao purportedly to help the Philippine Army fight “terrorists” makes the prospect of a renewed Moro War quite bright.

Recently, the GRP signed a peace agreement with the MILF in Kuala Lumpur. At the same time, the Philippine government signed another agreement with members of the Malaysian and Indonesian governments labeling the MILF as a “terrorist” organization. No less than the Philippine Vice President and concurrent

Foreign Affairs Secretary, Teofisto Guingona, expressed surprise at such equivocation.It appears that the present Philippine administration is still deciding whether to pursue peace or wage war against the MILF. There is also equivocation with regards to MNLF chief Nur Miuari. Will he be tried in Philippine courts like a common criminal or be sent to exile?

America has a war economy. Its economy will only expand during wartime, as it did during the two world wars. The Philippines will be devastated if another war in the magnitude of the 1970s MNLF war will erupt.But there is no need for war. Peace is always the better alternative. Understanding the issues by re-reading and re-interpreting Moro and Filipino history and understanding the protagonists’ culture, traditions, biases and prejudices may be the key to eventual peace in the country.

Filipinos, in whatever capacity, should not leave the solution to the government alone. Everyone should give its contribution to the solution. Spending billions of pesos on the military will simply create more poverty, more gaping mouths with no food to eat, more women and men having to prostitute themselves here and abroad just to earn a living, more workers forced to separate with kith and kin to work abroad and suffer so much indignities.

Peace in Mindanao does not necessarily mean capitulation of one side to the other. Peace in Mindanao means peace for the whole country. It means less military spending, more money for more useful purposes, more foreign and local investments which would mean more jobs and more money to spend.

From these little surveys and Mr. Felix’s interpretation of a text written some 250 years ago, we saw that texts can have positive and negative effects. The surveys also showed the ignorance of the Indios about the Moro Issue. An avenue for Peace that is opened for us is the Information path. Moro history (Majul’s Muslims in the Philippines book can be the start) should be taught in schools and universities with special emphasis on incidents portraying Moro-Indio cooperation such as the time when Moro datus sealed a pact with Bohol Indio leaders against the Spanish conquistadors. Islamic history should also be studied, as part of World History, without its distortions. It must be emphasized too that during the Crusades when Europeans invaded Palestine and the Middle East in the name of Christianity, the Christian Arabs fought side by side with their Muslim brethren against the foreign invaders. In the same vein, Lapu-Lapu (allegedly a pagan), Rajah Humabon (allegedly a Christianized indio) and Rajah Suleiman (a Moro) all fought the Spanish/European invaders.

The government should promote the culture and interests of the Moros through films and TV programs as well as in other media like the periodicals and the Web. Only through a better understanding of the Moros would the Indios be inclined to make real and sincere peace with them.

The surveys have proved that texts do have an impact on its readers. If the government and the mass media will continue producing texts of all kinds that depict the Moros in a bad light, then no peace can come to Mindanao. (end)

In the Philippine context, studying the Muslim-Christian (or Moro-Indio) communication relationship within the framework of hermeneutic phenomenology may give significant clues to the solution of the so-called Moro Problem.

HISTORICAL INTEPRETATION

For example, one of the most glaring differences between the Moros and the Filipino majority (Indios) is their view of history. For the Filipino majority, Philippine history began in 1521 with the “discovery of the Philippines” by Ferdinand Magellan and the start of Christianity in the country with the conversion of Rajah Humabon and his family. The Filipinos of today believe that history books recount Filipino history from that time on.

In the book “Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao” (Q.C.:2000, 327 pp.), two journalists who some now consider as “experts” in the Moro issue by virtue of this book, pronounced that “Mindanao was part of the Philippines ever since the Spanish colonizers came and created boundaries in what were formerly trading networks.” Many Filipinos of today even believe that the nation-state called Philippines actually existed from that time (1521) onwards. The myth of an enduring nation-state called the Philippines with Christian, Muslim and pagan inhabitants ruled by Spain for 350 years and America for 50 years is being constantly rekindled by all forms of media.

It would indeed be a shock for many Filipinos to learn that for 350 years, the word Filipino actually was reserved for Spaniards in the Philippines. And that their grandparents and great-grandparents were not Filipinos but “naturales”, “indios” or “mestizos”. A close reading of so-called Philippine history would reveal that it is a chronology of events affecting primarily Spaniards in the Philippines (i.e., Filipinos). The present-day Filipinos were mentioned, if ever, only tangentially. The Moros actually occupy more space, as they were the feared and hated enemies of the Spaniards in the Philippines (i.e., Filipinos).

On the other hand, a look at Moro history through various historical documents would reveal that the Moros were sovereign nations and they only interacted with European powers and other neighboring Muslim states. The Moros never considered the Indios (the present-day Filipinos) as sovereign people. The Moros never interacted with them officially and diplomatically. The Moros considered the Indios as natives who have accepted Christianity and became practically slaves of the Spanish. They were therefore considered fair game for the slave trade. In fact up to this day, among some Moros, the word Filipino is synonymous to Christian or slave.

As if in revenge, the Philippine post-colonial government had constructed a mythical history. Philippine history books made “historically important” the various isolated even personal Indio “uprising’s” against the Spanish. According to this version of history, the Moros were the unruly Muslim inhabitants in Mindanao who were dealt with “punitive expeditions” from Manila every now and then. And the Philippines is glorified as the “only Christian nation in Asia.”

Philippine history books do not mention, for example, what happened to the companions of Magellan after he was killed by Lapu-Lapu. Philippine history books do not mention that Rajah Humabon, whom the present-day Filipinos celebrate as the first “Filipino” Christian king, invited the Spanish/European survivors of Magellan’s forces and massacred all but one of them. Humabon was a Christian for only a day or two.

Strictly speaking, Philippine history started in earnest only in 1896 with the Katipunan Revolt or at the earliest, in the martyrdom of the three Spanish priests, Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora, who fought for the rights of Filipino clerics. Before this, Philippine history is really history of Spaniards in the Philippines* except for the sporadic and isolated “revolts” of the Indios all throughout the Colonial Period.

On the other hand, Moro history is partially or completely ignored by Philippine historians. Even in schools and universities, Moro history is not studied nor given any importance. But the Moros have a long memory. History is embedded in their culture. Royal families take great care in documenting their “salsilah” or family genealogies, which are by themselves, historical documents.

The Christian settlers in Mindanao criticize the Moros for their constant harping on the historical past. These settlers are proud that they do not care about the past but instead look to the future. (Jubair: 1997)But according to philosophical hermeneutics, “history is not separated from the present. We are always simultaneously part of the past, in the present, and anticipating the future. In other words, the past operates on us now in the present, and affects our conception of what is yet to come. At the same time, our present notions of reality affect how we view the past.”(Littlejohn, p.204)

Moro leaders and intellectuals maintain that if the Philippine government truly wants to solve the so-called Moro Problem, it must exert an honest-to-goodness effort to understand the feelings, sentiments, biases, ideals, prejudices, customs, traditions and historical experience of the Bangsa Moro as enunciated or articulated by the Moros themselves.

Muslim Filipino historian Cesar Adib Majul, former dean of the UP College of Arts and Sciences, lamented that “History books in the Philippines tend to lay emphasis on events in other islands and glorify national heroes from such places, as if the history of the Philippines is only that of people who had been conquered while the history of the unconquered ones do not merit a share in the history of the Philippines.” (Majul: 1973)It is indeed unfortunate that there are no Moro historians although some Moros are now starting to research and write about Moro history. Dean Majul is a Muslim of Arab and (Christian) Filipino parentage. Although he is a Muslim Filipino, he is not a Moro. He later migrated to the US.

Historians know that there is a “need of imaginative understanding for the minds of the people with whom he (the historian) is dealing, for the thought behind their acts.” (Carr:1961, p.26) This principle is important to remember because as the historian is faced with a sea full of “facts”, “by and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.” (Carr, p.26) Moro history as written by the Moros’ traditional enemies – the Spanish, the Americans and the Indios-Filipinos – cannot possibly have even the “most elementary measure of imaginative understanding.” In his Cambridge lectures, Edward Hallett Carr concluded that “History cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing.” (Carr, p.27)

The long history of the Moro-Spanish wars had lasting effects on the collective memory of the Indios. For almost 350 years, the Indios were helpless natives “caught between the Spaniards, who were the masters of the land and the Moros, who were the masters of the seas. ” (Dery 1997) When the Americans came, the idea that “a good Moro is a dead Moro” was given renewed currency. The Moros were usually referred to as “uncivilized”, “savages” or “barbarians” by the Americans.

To pretend that the modern-day Filipinos (now supposedly composed of Indios, Moros and pagans) is a homogeneous nation with one history and one destiny and that the present conflict in the South is simply due to some disgruntled Moro bandits will not solve the problem and may even exacerbate it.

Communication Theoretical Apprcahes

As Gadamer pointed out, the prejudices of each party must be acknowledged and transformed into a positive force. Both parties to the conflict must acknowledge the fact that they do not like each other and that such dislike had already cost both sides tens of thousands of lives and millions of dollars since the 1970’s.Hermeneutics must necessarily come into play if one were serious in solving the “communication gap” between the Muslim and Christian Filipino communities. There must be a real effort in cultural interpretation.The Moro problem is even exacerbated by the textual interpretation of both groups to important documents like the Philippine Constitution and the Tripoli Agreement.

Many people in the government and the academe try to view the Moro Problem within the framework of social constructionist communication theories. The government constructs an image of a homogenized “Filipino” culture or nation through its schools, government agencies and the mass media. This “Filipino” nation has a “national hero”, a national flower”, a “national fruit”, etc. of which every Filipino citizen is supposed to be proud of. (Interestingly, all these “national” things seem to come from the Tagalog region.)

Some academics use Marxist critical theories in analyzing the Moro Issue. The Moro issue is argued as one of the results of Spanish colonialism and American imperialism. But some Moro intellectuals believe that Marxist postcolonial discourses can be misleading because the Moros are still under colonial rule; i.e., Filipino (Indio) colonial rule. It is absolutely useless to blame the Americans or multinationals or globalization for the plight of the Moros, as what the leftists are wont to do. If there’s anyone to blame, it is the current colonial power, i.e., the Filipino government. The MNLF, MILF, BMLO and other Moro groups have petitioned the United Nations and the OIC to resolve that the Bangsa Moro nation be de-colonized.

Today’s Filipino historians, writers, or intellectuals do not mention the fact that the great Filipino nationalist himself, Claro M. Recto, authored the bill called “Colonization of Mindanao Act.”

Critical studies tend to exacerbate social conditions. And since critical studies are focused on power, violence usually results in societies they (the theorists and their studies) are observing (Krippendorf 1989).Hermeneutic phenomenology or philosophical hermeneutics could be the framework needed to help solve this socio-political problem. Using critical theories, which focus on ideology and power, might simply aggravate the problem. As Paul Ricoeur (1981) noted:

“what is at stake can be expressed in terms of an alternative: either a hermeneutical or a critical consciousness…In contrast with the positive assessment of hermeneutics, the theory of ideology adopts a suspicious approach, seeing tradition as merely the systematically distorted expression of communication under unacknowledged conditions of violence.”

Text Interpretation

Hermeneutics say that “an explication of a text occurs only after a prior understanding of it, yet that prior understanding is justified by the careful explication it allows. In other words, before we can go about discussing and analyzing a text, we must have a global conception of its meaning.” (Dudley: 1984, p.97)

The problem lies in the interpreter’s prior conceptions. A reader necessarily has his biases and prejudices about the subject he reads. His perception of the text will have to coincide with his previously held beliefs.As Andrew pointed out, “new hermeneutics…rest on a modernist concern about the relativity of judgment that affects all disciplines…. There is no longer a single notion of seeing, rather there are modes of seeing…” (Dudley, p.173)

The Muslim-Christian or more precisely, the Moro-Indio conflict is never ending because the biases and prejudices of both sides are not clearly expressed in a “no holds barred” dialogue. The dialogues between the Philippine government (called GRP for Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and the Moro armed groups (either the MNLF or MILF) are characterized by diplomacy, tact, duplicity, and deviousness.Ambassador Pacifico Castro, member of the Philippine Panel in the Tripoli talks in 1976, declared that because of his expertise in the French language, he was able to make the official French version of the Tripoli Agreement very advantageous to the GRP.

In the example below, two articles written in 1755 had a tremendous impact on a particular reader 236 years later. The English translations of the two texts are titled “The Siege of Palumpong” and “The Battle of Iligan.” The Society of Jesus printed the original Spanish texts in 1755 in Manila. The English translation by Alfonso Felix, Jr. was printed in Quezon City in 1991.

As its subtitle indicates, the Palumpong article was a “report of the valiant defense put up by the Visayan natives of the town of Palumpong in the Island of Leyte of the Province of Catbalogan in the Philippines against the Muslim attack carried by the Ilanons (sic) and the Maranaos in the month of June 1754.” On the other hand, the Iligan article was a “summary of the victories that to the great glory of God and to the Luster and Honor of the Royal Catholic Arms of His Majesty in defense of the Christian communities and Islands of the Visayas were achieved against the Muslim enemies by the armada detached to the fortress of Iligan which is on the shores of the Island of Mindanao in the year 1754.”

It must be noted that the priests, in this case, the Jesuits, printed the texts. During the Moro-Spanish wars, the priests led the fight against the Moros. The priest was responsible for building the town’s fort, providing ammunition and cannons and commanding the “army”. He appointed all officers and men of the militia, guards and sentinels. Consequently, the friars were the Moros’ prime targets. They were decapitated, captured and generally ill-treated. The friar’s ransom went no less than 1,000 pesos and even went as high as 10,000 pesos (Dery, 1997, p.64). It can then be safely assumed that the texts were not objectively written. On the contrary, the texts most probably were propaganda materials used by the friars to lift the morale of the Christian natives, whom they called “naturales”.

Perception of a turn-of-the 20th century gentleman on a 230-year old text.

In 1991, Mr. Alfonso Felix, Jr. was the President of the Historical Conservation Society. The members of the Society at that time included Alejandro Melchor, Jesus Lazatin, Antonio Araneta, Jr., Enrique Syquia, Ernesto Aboitiz, Feliciano Belmonte, Jr., Antonio Concepcion, Francisco Elizalde, O.D. Corpuz, etc. – a veritable Who’s Who among the Filipino elites. Mr. Felix obtained copies of the documents from the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid and proudly reported it to the Society.

In his Report and Acknowledgement speech of Aug. 28, 1991 in Manila, he minced no words. His prejudices and biases against the Moros and Muslims, in general, knew no bounds.

About Islam, he said: “…there seems to be in Islam something that pushes its adherents to a delight in the pain of others. The names of Genghis Khan and Tamerlaine are too well-known to need further comment.”His hatred for Muslims is evident. He wrote: “Let us take the case of Salman Rushdie whom the Holy Ayatollah condemned to death and who is now living in hiding. Unfortunately, the British have gone soft. If they had made it clear to the Iranians that the death of Salman Rushdie would result in the destruction of Teheran, the Iranians would think twice before inflicting their religion on civilized countries.”

He called Moros names like “devils in human form” or citizens “of the Republic of Mad Dogs” or “reptiles”. He obviously believed that the Moro Wars are not yet over. And his recommendation: “I do not think Christian Filipinos are afraid of Moros. A modern army equipped with the weapons of today and above all with the will to use them will soon cause the Moros to reconsider. When the Italians used poison gas in Ethiopia in 1935 many Ethiopians were exterminated and the liberals of the world found themselves in tears. I do not find poison gas used against Ethiopians deplorable.”

He even counseled the then President Aquino thus: “I invite our President, Her Excellency Da. Corazon Cojuangco vda. de Aquino to reflect on my words for I feel I am expressing with these words the opinion of the majority of Filipino peasants and Filipino soldiers.”

Felix’s reaction in the context of hermeneutic theories

Paul Ricoeur, like Gadamer, believes that the reader and the text share an intimate relationship. In fact, “the text can speak to and change the interpreter.”(Littlejohn:1979, p.209) Ricoeur calls this process appropriation, i.e., a reader who agrees with the messages of the text, appropriates the ideas of the text as his very own.

From the above example, it is patently clear that the 1755 texts and Mr. Felix had an “intimate interaction.” Although 216 years separate the text and the reader (Mr. Felix), the reader appropriated the meaning of the texts. Mr. Felix was so worked up by the messages of the text such that he ended up delivering a very emotional address to the Historical Conservation Society.

Mr. Felix was obviously a rich and intelligent Filipino. He spoke Spanish fluently and presumably was well-read and well-traveled. Presumably, he was well respected by the society at large. He was after all, the head of the Historical Conservation Society as well as a friend of foreign dignitaries. Yet his speech could rank as one of the most bigoted speeches of the century. Was he not afraid of ridicule from his colleagues in the Historical Society? Apparently, he knew them and he knew that all of them shared the same prejudices. Perhaps the others just did not dare express them publicly.

Stanley Fish, another theorist who uses the hermeneutic circle, maintains, “readers are members of interpretive communities, groups that interact with one another, construct common realities and meanings and employ those in their readings.”(Littlejohn, p.209) The world may be shocked at Mr. Felix’s speech, but Mr. Felix very well knew that he and his audience belonged to the same interpretive community and therefore the meanings he derived from the old Spanish text would be shared by everyone in his Society.

Stanley Fish’s reader-response theory does not ask, “What does a text mean?” but “What does a text do?” In this example, the 1755 Spanish texts prompted the President of an historical society in 1991 to deliver and publish a scathing attack on Islam, the Moros and the Muslims.

Mr. Felix also proved the hermeneutic belief that “history is not separated from the present. We are always simultaneously part of the past, in the present, and anticipating the future…” Although the texts were hundreds of years old and that the present political reality is so very different from the one depicted in the texts, Mr.Felix’s reaction was still as if the Past is the Present. Although the Moro Wars between the Moros and the Spanish were over a long time ago, he called on the Philippine President, addressing her with the Spanish honorific Doña, to wage war against the Moros.

During the Middle Ages, the burghers, many of them Jews, started to gain economic power. Pretty soon, the Jew moneymen began having a monetary network all over the European continent. Kings and dukes owed them huge amounts of money. The biggest of them, like the Rothschilds gained titles to nobility. But the European Christians were not amused.

Western literature is full of anti-Semitic propaganda. Shakespeare’s Shylock is perhaps the most famous Jewish character in Western literature. Throughout the Middle Ages and well into the Industrial Age, anti-Jewish policies were enacted all over Europe.

The result of this anti-Semitic media products resulted into one of history’s biggest massacres – the German extermination of some 6 million Jews during World War II.

In the case of the Muslims, the situation is similar. Since the Middle Ages, the Church fathers had a continuous propaganda against the Muslims – the so-called heathens and infidels. This of course resulted in the Crusades, which united most of the Kingdoms of Europe.

The Christian Crusades were a failure. But the exploits of some Christians like those of Richard the Lionheart became the stuff of Christian legends. Attacks on Islam were a normal feature in Christian literature, both academic and popular.

In the Age of European Colonization, which coincided with the fall of Muslim power, Western literature on Muslims and Islam became condescending and even romanticized as something noble, feminine and eminently conquerable.

After World War II, the world witnessed the creation of several Muslim states. Although still controlled by the Western powers, the Muslim Voice suddenly made its appearance in the world media. Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan led the articulation of Muslim aspirations.

In the 1970s, the OPEC, especially its Muslim members, flexed its muscles and declared an oil embargo. The Arab countries, as well as the Western oil companies, suddenly found themselves extremely rich – with a lot of economic power.

The Western media promptly blamed the Arabs and Muslims as the culprits in the world oil crisis. The Western-owned oil companies were exonerated. This time, caricatures of Arabs as uncivilized desert nomads (Bedouins) turned to Arabs as uncivilized but very rich oilmen buying everything Western.

With the Cold War going on, the Muslims, who were the natural enemies of Communism, were the dearest friends of the West.

When USSR invaded Afghanistan, America and the CIA funded Muslim fundamentalists from all over the Muslim world to join the Taliban in their fight against USSR. A young Saudi citizen, scion of the rich merchant family, the Bin Ladens, was made the fund-raiser in the Arab world. His name was Osama bin Laden. A Moro named Abdurajak Janjalani was one of those recruited by the CIA to fight in Afghanistan.

But with the fall of USSR and most of the Communist world, the Muslims found themselves in their traditional role – as enemies of the West. Osama Bin Laden became Enemy Number One of the US and her allies. Janjalani became Enemy Number One of the Philippine government. The US and her allies declared war against the Talibans, whom they funded, trained and helped put in power in the first place.

With Bush’s and Blair’s War on Terrorism, the Muslims found themselves having a new Identity. They are no longer heathens or infidels or exotic Orientals. They are simply Terrorists.

Muslim Minorities are Worst Victims

Anti-Muslim propaganda is inimical to all Muslims, but especially to Muslim minorities living in non-Muslim countries. These Muslims are already marginalized and continuing anti-Muslim propaganda simply foster discrimination by the majority.

Philippine case

In the Philippines, anti-Muslim propaganda has been institutionalized by the Spaniards since the 17th century. Spanish literature, documents, Church sermons and official policies are full of anti-Muslim (against all Muslims not just Moros) material. The indios or naturales (non-Muslim natives) were fed not only anti-Muslim sermons but also anti-Muslim entertainment. Zarzuelas or moro-moro were popular musical stage plays whose protagonists were Christians and Muslims (of any country). The Muslims were always the villains in these plays.

When the Americans came, the slogan became: “A good Moro is a dead Moro”.

Even after the independence in 1946, anti-Muslim stories can be found in newspapers, films, comics and even school textbooks.

When I was in Grade VI, I was scanning my younger sister’s Grade III textbook. I was so shocked to read the Moros described as “bandits, pirates and outlaws.” I remember showing the book to my brother who was in college. He simply laughed and said, “So what’s new?”

Through the years, I’ve seen the Moros / Muslims mocked, insulted in films, on TV, in comic books, on radio and in newspaper stories, columns and even editorials.

Through the years, I have been forced to defend the Moros / Muslims in school, office, seminars and various fora.

I have later realized that when a Moro starts defending Moro or Islamic culture and identity, he will find the Christian Filipinos — be they classmates, officemates, bosses, friends or acquaintances — regarding him/her with a wary eye. And if that Moro shows his/her superiority in any way (intelligence, skills, etc.), sooner or later, that Moro would be left alone by the Christians because he/she could not be their TOKEN friend, underling or protege.

Today, many Moros have learned that in order to succeed in the Philippines, they will have to play the role of meek, mild-mannered, yes men and women to their Christian fellow citizens. Many Christian Filipino leaders have their Moro sidekicks. Non-government organizations operating in Mindanao are so happy to be surrounded by such Moros. Now, because of the presence of so many Moro a__-lickers, the Media have started to patronize the Moros in general.

If the Philippine media do not demonize the Moros as fanatic killers, they patronize them as poor, uneducated souls oppressed by their own leaders and in terrible need of the helping hand of peace-loving Christian Filipinos.

While browsing the web, I found a copy of this article published in Business World in 2003. To my surprise, I was quoted by the author. Actually, I think he got his quotes from a speech I delivered in 2000 at UP Los Banos. It’s quite a good article. Business Mirror does not keep archives of articles years ago. Fortunately, another site, AFRIM does. Click here for the AFRIM copy.

It’s ho-hum to entertain thoughts of imperialism again when interpreting images of the United States government excitedly digging pathways to establish military presence in Mindanao. After all, it seldom plays a barbaric spectator to many major conflicts having to do with Muslim communities in the world. But the presence of American troops in Mindanao is interesting in
that it evokes an image of ghosts that have come to haunt anew the future of Mindanao.

It may have won the hearts of some Mindanaoans who gaze at American troops as noble peacekeepers in a foreign land, but the US isn’t at all a stranger there, having helped propagate the roots of this tumult in Mindanao about a century ago. Whether this will become tinder for Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels to factor in their own war any sentiment favoring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, as some fear, can be dismissed as irresponsible play-up of the tension in the home front. If sympathy attacks do happen, these will trace beginnings to a page in history just the same.

Scholars have always insisted for people to ground their viewpoint of the Mindanao conflict to the past, particularly when assessing the potency of economic assistance to Mindanao’s poor Muslims. Not a few scholars have criticized efforts to provide such assistance as a way to appease the separatist movement, noting it smacks of utter disregard to how Muslims in Mindanao came to be poor in the first place.

“It’s like bribing,” Julkipli Wadi, who teaches Islamic studies at the University of the Philippines, said in an interview. It’s not to say that helping poor Muslim communities to improve living conditions is unimportant, he said. But without addressing the political question that of the Muslim communities’ clamor to realize a century-old desire to govern themselves, the conflict will continue, he said.

Historical accounts written by Muslims and some Christian scholars highlight the US connection to the Mindanao conflict when it colonized the archipelago by the turn of the 20th century. It bought the Philippines from Spain in 1898 and the purchase included Mindanao and Sulu. Before the US began integrating Mindanao and Sulu with the entire Philippines, it was Spain that attempted to claim the Moroland as among its territories, scholars say.
But the Americans proved it had better strategies to occupy the southern part of the archipelago, Madge Kho, a native of Jolo who now resides in Boston, Massachusetts, said in a paper on the Mindanao conflict. “What the Spaniards did not succeed in accomplishing, that of Filipinizing the south, the Americans did in less than several decades,” she said, noting what took place was the US’ so-called policy of attraction.

In maintaining that Spain failed to conquer Moroland, Muslim scholars often quote historian Vic Hurley, who wrote, “The close of the unsuccessful Spanish conquest of Moroland marked the beginning of the end of one of the most remarkable resistance in the annals of military history. The Muslims staged a bitter and uninterrupted warfare against the might of Spain for a period of 377 years.”

HISTORY OF DECEPTION

Aware of this, the Americans signed a peace treaty with the Sulu sultanate in 1899. This was meant for the US to buy time in fighting resistance to occupation in the north, Ms. Kho said. But the US later broke this treaty and moved to colonize the south after consolidating its rule in the north in 1901.
Over a decade later, the US lured Christians from the north to relocate in the south. The objectives, according to Ms. Kho: to forestall peasant uprising in the north and change the Mindanao ethnic landscape. These years are critical in understanding the appreciation of the conflict that persists to this day.

Some representatives of the US government would later lobby to keep Mindanao separate from the Philippines when the US Congress was debating to grant it independence. While deliberations were under way, American businesses took up huge landholdings in Mindanao, Ms. Kho said.

This explains the entrenched interests of such giants as Dole and Del Monte in Mindanao’s farm sector. Scholars stress that through those years tension over land between Christians and Muslims brewed steadily. Christians’ edge was boosted with the establishment of a land titling system, the implications of which on their culture Muslims failed to appreciate at once. “Mindanao was virtually Christian-free before the arrival of the US,” Ms. Kho said in an article
published in a Web site hosted by Waltham Concerned Citizens. “In 1913, Moros made up 98% of the population. By 1972, the percentage had fallen to 40. Today, Christians outnumber Moros nine to one in mainland Mindanao though Sulu still remains 95% Moro. Only 15% of the land in
Mindanao today are still in Moro hands.”

These drastically altered demographics have made the Moro’s political desire ticklish to say the least. Manifestations of the conflict in recent years, however, appear to have taken on other dimensions including religious as perceived by many. What began as a purely political contest has today become for the government an arena to cleanse Philippine society of
terrorists.

While peace advocates in the country abhor the use of terror labels, it has not escaped Muslim intellectuals that the fight for self-determination could one day slip into terror tactics. In September 2000 when the Abu Sayyaf, a group that would be later brushed off as a criminal gang, became effective in capturing international attention, Datu Jamal Ashley Abbas raised this
possibility: “A more serious effect is the apparent success of the Abu Sayyaf and the apparent failure of the MILF. This means that more Moros would now be inclined to go the way of terrorism instead of a semi-conventional warfare practised by the MILF.”

The MILF leadership continues to insist it has nothing to do with the recent spate of terror tactics used to down civilian and military targets. And President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is among those demanding for proof the group isn’t into this ballgame. Her seeming incredulity at MILF innocence in recent events has fuelled speculation that her administration’s drive to stamp
out criminality has become another rationale to create a concourse for American troops on Philippine soil. It also fits snugly into the US war on terror for which the Bush administration has built alliance with friendly nations.

So there, the US is back on Mindanao soil. Its soldiers may not know the topography by heart, but they are not necessarily unfamiliar with the political terrain that was created partly as a result of the US’ “policy of attraction” in early 20th century.

STATE TERRORISM

Filipinos overwhelmed by the surge of criminality in Mindanao find it a relief that American troops are around to help quell terrorism. But scholars are on guard against accepting the all-American view of terrorism that exonerates the US contribution to the overall scheme of things. “We posit that US-supported terrorism is one category of terrorism,” a paper published
in the Journal of Peace Psychology stated.

Authors Cristina Jayme Montiel, psychology professor at Ateneo de Manila University, and Mustafa K. Anuar, professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia, noted the use by the US of “terroristic violence” to advance its political goals. “The armed intrusion of a world power into the everyday lives of populations in weaker states sows very great fear and intense resentments among a civilian citizenry victimized by these foreign military attacks,” they said.

The authors’ main thesis is to expand the meanings and categories of terrorism to include “structural invisible violence.” They said this refers to “unequal social systems” under which massive deprivations thrive. And in the case of Mindanao, the deprivation is clearly an offshoot of the colonial years. Many would rather bury the past and move on, Mr. Abbas said. Yet,
like it or not, a people’s resentment to others has a way of surviving the passage of a century.

It is not only in the Philippines where the US interest has helped spawn resentment among peoples and, in some cases, resentment against the US and its allies. Ms. Montiel and Mr. Anuar said: “In many parts of the majority world, the US is believed to have backed terrorist groups and
helped undermine legitimate governments in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Israel, a close US ally, likewise practices state terrorism as illustrated by its bellicose attitude towards the occupied Palestinians.”

That the US has returned to Mindanao isn’t for the books, but it stands out in how old the ghosts that will lurk in the shadows when American troops deal with MILF rebels directly or otherwise. Knowing these ghosts can help clear the mind and know when and who to tag as terrorists.